Jaffer accused of seeking secrets

Asked about satellites as MP, investigator says

Former Conservative MP Rahim Jaffer sought secret information about Canadian military satellite technology after meeting with stateowned Chinese technology companies in China in 2010, according to a document filed in an Ottawa courthouse Tuesday by private investigator Derrick Snowdy.

Snowdy is being sued by Jaffer’s wife, Helena Guergis, for defamation, along with Prime Minister Stephen Harper, the Conservative Party of Canada and a number of senior officials who were involved with Guergis’s expulsion from the Conservative caucus in April 2010 in the “busty hookers” scandal.

Guergis resigned from cabinet and was expelled from the Conservative caucus the day after the Toronto Star reported that Jaffer and business associates had partied with escorts at a pricey Toronto restaurant the night that Jaffer was charged with cocaine possession.

In Ottawa Wednesday, lawyers for Harper and Guy Giorno, his former chief of staff, will argue Guergis’s lawsuit ought to be thrown out of court.

Snowdy’s statement of defence casts light on Jaffer’s February 2010 trip to China, which Jaffer made with Hai Shiene Chen, a Chinese Canadian businessman.

Chen “had many connections and ties to state-owned technology companies in the People’s Republic of China and that had been anxious to befriend Jaffer and Guergis according to email exchanges,” Snowdy writes.

During the trip, Snowdy writes, Jaffer “was hosted and socialized by Chen’s associates representing stateowned technology companies.”

On his return, Jaffer wrote to David Pierce, then the director of parliamentary affairs to then industry minister Tony Clement, with detailed questions about the Canadian government’s “long-term space policy” regarding Radarsat Constellation, a high-tech earth-observation satellite being developed by MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates with more than $500 million in funding.

On March 16, 2010, Jaffer, using an email address belonging to Guergis’s MP account, wrote that he had “a few questions on behalf of some constituents who are friends of Helena and I.”

He then asks, in the email, about the government’s plans for the satellite program, including its sensitive “automatic identification system,” a military system used to identify vessels in Canadian waters.

“I know these are very technical questions and I have pretty much copied and pasted their request directly to you,” Jaffer wrote in the email to Pierce.

In a letter to ethics commissioner Mary Dawson on April 16, 2010, after Guergis left the government, Pierce wrote that he also spoke to Jaffer on March 17 but did not pass on any information about Canada’s space program.

In his statement of defence, Snowdy writes that he “understood that Guergis had used her office to assist or procure Jaffer’s visa to enter China,” and suggests that Jaffer may have travelled on the diplomatic passport he received as a spouse of a cabinet minister.

The Globe and Mail has previously reported that Jaffer claimed to have lost that passport when he was asked to return it following his wife’s departure from cabinet.

In an interview on Tuesday, Snowdy said that he has spoken to “police and intelligence agencies with respect to a number of Mr. Jaffer’s business interests and contacts,” but declined to be more specific.

Contacted by telephone Tuesday, Jaffer declined to comment on the allegations in Snowdy’s statement of defence. Chen could not be reached for comment.